While browsing around for something completely different, I came across this advert for the new Eee 1000, which was rumoured to launch on July 8th. Funnily enough, that’s today! With a pricetag, it is in dangerous waters, competing against bargain machines from Dell, Acer and HP/Compaq (not the Mini-Note though, thats ~$900 here).

I posted my thoughts on these larger, more expensive Eee’s in my Eee 701 “review”, and I stand by my opinion that the Eee branding is moving too far out of the price bracket it set out to target. I’ve found the Eee 701 for as low as AU$319 here, less than half the price of this new model. Sure it has a low-res screen, tiny storage space and only 512MB of memory, but it’s cheap. $648 just isn’t.
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I’ve been using the final release version of Firefox 3.0 since it was released a few days ago, and I’ve been very impressed. It is considerably faster than Firefox 2.0, both when first started and after several days of having hundreds of tabs opened and closed (without restart, and often 20 or more simultaneously).

This morning when I fired up my Eee, I got online using my USB HSDPA modem and downloaded the new version. Since my Eee has the tiny 7″ 800×480 display, web browsing isn’t the most comfortable experience, since 1024px wide seems to be the norm in website formatting these days. In Firefox 2.0 zooming was next to useless, and didn’t provide any benefit. I’d resorted to using AsTray to force the display res up to 1000×600, which to be honest doesn’t look good at all. Continue Reading

Now that Mitchell has shared his views, I will share my views on the Eee.

The 8 GB drive on my Eee is fine for almost any OS.  Once you start using the machine, it becomes clear that the 2, 4 and 8GB drives available are simply not enough.  Plus Asus, in their infinite wisdom, has used the Union FS so that you can quickly restore the Eee back to the factory OS.  You can do this without needing to have a External Optical drive or a USB thumb drive.  It’s very convenient, but it takes up a tremendous amount of space on the 8 GB drive.  One of these days I need to follow the instructions on eeeuser.com to remove the partition.  This will make the full 8 GB of flash available.  I have already bought a external USB drive from Best Buy, which goes with me when I need the extra storage.  I have most of my music on that drive with a subset of music on an SD card.  I also have some video and a backup of all documents on the Eee stored on this drive.  Because it’s a portable drive, it’s completely powered by the Eee’s USB ports.  It takes up two of the three ports.  It runs just fine when it’s on battery but it does suck the battery down faster.  Soon I am going to be purchasing a 16 GB SDHC so I can leave the USB drive behind occasionally.

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I wasn’t planning to write about my experience with the Eee this soon but I’m so excited about this thing I just couldn’t wait.

Yesterday morning I headed out the door with just the Eee in my bag, leaving the MacBook Pro on my desk at home. While it probably isn’t as good for my self-imposed weight loss program, it did feel nice to have a lighter bag. I chucked the AC adaptor in my bag so I could charge the unit up at university should I need to.

On the train I hooked up my USB HSDPA modem so I could check my regular news sites and respond to some emails. I chatted with Judie for a bit on MSN, and worked on an essay in Microsoft Word, both which gave me a good opportunity to test out the keyboard. Despite its size I found it great to type on, rarely hitting the wrong key or having to even look down. The keys do tap a bit when pressed, but I’m not about the knock marks off it for that.

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I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to test a number of ultra portable machines recently, including MacBook Air, Fujitsu P8010, Toshiba R500, HTC Shift and Fujitsu U1010. Since all these machines have gone back, I’ve realised how nice it was to carry a compact and light laptop, as opposed to my MacBook Pro.

Looking around, I came across the good old 7” Eee PC for the unbelievable price of AU$341, so with not much to lose I picked one up this weekend. This is the first time I’ve actually used one of these things, and I have to say for the price it is pretty impressive. The build quality is good, the screen is nice and bright (although low res), and I can touch type rather well on the keyboard.

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It looks like all of you ASUS fanboys and girls may soon have even more reason to get excited; not only is there a 901 coming, but according to UMPC Fever, there is possibly a 1000 coming as well. Say Whaaa?

ASUS is looking forward to welcoming you during Computex 2008 in Taipei, Taiwan, for the ASUS’ 08 Computex Trilogy of launch events. We would also like to specially extend an invitation to you to attend the official global launch of the new Eee PC™ 901 and 1000 series.

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In Software Design and Development I was constantly reminded about something called “scope creep” which can affect developers when making applications. It referred to adding or spending too much time on a particular feature, at the cost of meeting a deadline or budget.

It seems ASUS has let this happen to their little Eee PC, once touted as a $199 laptop. The original Eee PC, with it’s 7″ 800×480 display and 4GB flash memory came in at $399, double the price it was planned for. But it was still cheap, so it sold by the thousands. Then the 8GB model arrived, sporting a $100 premium over it’s lower capacity brother. Still, it was tiny and light so it sold quite well too.

Now ASUS is thinking they can stretch the price even more with the Eee 901, which combines an 8.9″ 1024×600 display and up to 20GB flash into the same space as the original Eee 701. Sounds good, but it has one fatal flaw: it’s going to cost $649. That brings it up to the price of the HP Mini-Note, which is better equiped than the Eee with hard drive options up to 200GB and larger keyboard.

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It was a tough choice, but it all came down to the fact that I was able to buy the machine yesterday from Micro Center - which is where I headed as soon as I had the cash.

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